Category: Blogs

Here’s How to Keep TTIP Alive

By Marie Kasperek

After fifteen rounds of negotiations with the United States on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) since 2013, European Union (EU) Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said that the free-trade deal is likely to be “in the freezer” until the new US administration has figured out its position on transatlantic trade. US President Donald Trump’s […]

A Reality Check for Russian Propaganda

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America launch a Russian-language news network The flurries of disinformation and fake news obfuscating the current state of affairs in Russia, and the Kremlin’s activity worldwide, have not created a post-truth world, but one in which some find truth increasingly difficult to promote. “I think we’ve given up […]

Lessons from a Regional Approach to Solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Richard LeBaron

Towards the end of their press conference on February 15, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald J. Trump hinted at their evolving strategy to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict and broader Arab-Israeli differences through a regional approach.  Netanyahu: And I believe that the great opportunity for peace comes from a regional approach from […]

Trump Says He is a Fan of NATO, but Allies Not Paying Their Bills

By Donald Trump, Vox

The tired echoes of yesterday’s fights. We’re fighting battles that no longer help us. We’re fighting battles that other people aren’t treating us fairly in the fight.

Ukraine’s Bitter Struggle: The Prequel

By Diane Francis

Ukraine is a nation interrupted, its identity and promise stolen by predators for centuries. The predation continues today as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s creeping invasion of Ukraine grinds on, resulting in the murder of 10,000 Ukrainians, destruction of two major cities and its industrial base, seizure of nine percent of its land, and flight of […]

The KGB and Me

By Jeffrey Gedmin

We overlapped, Vladimir Putin and me. Putin arrived in Dresden in August 1985 as a 32-year-old KGB major. He was working undercover as a consular officer, recruiting academics, journalists, and business people to spy for the Soviet Union in the West. I was in Dresden and throughout communist East Germany often in those days; I […]

Germany’s Self-Imposed Obstacles to Increasing Defense Spending

By Konstantin von Hammerstein and Peter Müller, Spiegel

Even now, the German military is having trouble spending its money sensibly. The structures are simply too complicated…

The Heavens Are Home to More than One Hundred

By Robert McConnell

In the fall of 2013, students took to the Maidan (Independence Square) in Kyiv in protest. Their complaint was with then-President Viktor Yanukovych, who had reneged on his pledge to sign the EU’s Association Agreement with Ukraine and was instead negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Euromaidan was underway. Additional protesters streamed into the […]

The Nuclear Fallout of a Possible Trump-Putin Détente

By Mariana Budjeryn and Andreas Umland

So far, US President Donald Trump’s Russia policy remains a mystery. Does he want to set in motion a US-Russia rapprochement? If so, sanctions against Russia may be increasingly difficult to sustain. The Trump administration might judge Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity to be a bothersome yet insufficient impediment to mending fences with Putin and, […]